


Old Light

by orphan_account



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: M/M, MWPP Era, Marauders' Era, wolfstar
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-07
Updated: 2013-01-07
Packaged: 2017-11-24 00:10:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,331
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/628068
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sirius has trouble adjusting to life post-Azkaban and takes to sleeping outside. Remus attempts to cope.<br/>Based on "Samson" by Regina Spektor.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Old Light

**Author's Note:**

> Direct quotes from "Samson" by Regina Spektor, which I do not own, are used.  
> This was written for the Winter Wolfstar Wank.

When Sirius arrived on Remus’s doorstep, muddy and ragged, no words were exchanged. Remus simply pulled open the large oak door, nodded, and retreated inside, allowing Sirius to stamp shoe prints evenly across freshly vacuumed carpet onto linoleum, shiny with wax, as he followed the werewolf from a distance. The prints should have made Remus cringe, but right now there were more important things at hand than his immaculate flooring.

Two cups of tea and a bowl of Weetabix later, Sirius raised his head, locking eyes with Remus. His gaze was detached, analytical, hard. Finally, he broke the silence.

“Your hair is red.”

Remus swallowed, taking a moment to digest the nonsequitor.

“Grey,” he corrected with a soft smile. “Though not entirely. The red must be a trick of lights.” He gestured lightly to the bare, yellowed bulbs that shook slightly with the whirl of the low-hanging ceiling fan.

Quiet returned.

Finally, he led Sirius to the bedroom. “Just… make yourself comfortable,” Remus said, trying to remain calm as Sirius stared, eyes blank and wide, as if he were an apparition – something so unexpected and otherworldly that he couldn’t be processed by a glance, something that commanded scrutiny. Unsettled, Remus closed the door softly, leaving Sirius to his slumber. “You’re beautiful,” Sirius mumbled almost soundlessly. Remus didn’t hear.

Sirius lowered himself onto the four post bed carefully, failing to remove his shoes before swinging them onto the bed, mud flicking onto the floor. He lay perfectly still, knowing full well that his filthy garments were leaving dark, wet stains on the faded red quilt. A bed, a full stomach, and almost guaranteed safety – these luxuries whirled around Sirius’s headspace, their presence suffocating, overwhelming. He slid his body to the floor, curling into a ball, resting his cheek against the cool wood. It took him hours to fall asleep.

That night, Remus, ever a proper gentleman, slept in the den. He awoke to a blood-curdling scream ripping itself out of Sirius’s throat.

That was the last time Sirius slept inside.  

“Padfoot doesn’t feel things like I do. It’s fine, Remus. It’s easier. Sleeping outside - it’s what dogs were designed to do. I’m used to it.”

All talk aside, the arrangement was uncomfortable.

Weeks passed. Sometimes Remus forgot he was there, having to remind himself to set the breakfast table for two, to remove the comics section from the Prophet and place it opposite of his plate for Sirius’s perusal, to cook bacon and eggs as well as his usual porridge. He was unsure if Sirius still enjoyed the comics or bacon, but it gave the morning routine a sense of normalcy, a twinge of what had been, and so he continued to do so.

Some mornings, Sirius didn’t show up for breakfast at all. Remus would proceed as normal, setting the table for two, preparing cups of tea (adding cream and three sugars to one), and spooning the food onto Sirius’s plate. He would drink his tea slowly before reluctantly reaching across the table and bringing Sirius’s cup to his own lips, and gulping it down. It was entirely unenjoyable – tepid and sickeningly sweet. The cream coated his mouth in a thin layer of milkfat, a constant reminder for the next few hours that though Sirius was back, things were not okay.

But some days, Sirius showed, bright and early, mass of black hair tangled with dirt and wet with morning dew. As he scarfed down his second and third helpings of bacon, you could see the faintest hints of a smile twitch at the corner of his lips.

Each time Sirius didn’t show, Remus drank his tea more slowly, hoping for an appearance, hoping to elicit a familiar grin, hoping for normalcy.

But more often than not, Sirius was absent. He remained outside, as Padfoot, for days on end.

Remus began drawing absentmindedly in the margins of the comics. It made the cup of tea last longer, gave his hands something to do, helped his mind fixate on something other than Sirius.

They started out as simple doodles, abstract designs reminiscent of art deco wallpaper. Gradually, they became more complex, sometimes scenes from a dream, sometimes scenes from his past, sometimes scribbles of nothing in particular.

Slowly, words began to find a place in the margins alongside the images. At first it was a single word written over and over, one that had been bouncing around in his head for a few days, one with a particularly pleasing sound or a peculiar meaning that he was determined to incorporate into his vocabulary. Words became poems, poems that Remus would agonize over. He would carry the papers in his pocket, in his briefcase, pulling them out at any spare moment to question his word choice, to rework his rhythm. He poured his everything into these words, these drawings.

He’d leave the previous day’s comics, almost illegible due to his additions, at the breakfast table every morning. When he returned each evening, they were gone.

Sometimes, Sirius would wake with a howl and Remus would find himself seated in the back yard, rambling to other man about this or that – anything to keep his mind off the memories that replayed in his dreams.

During that summer’s brightest meteor shower, Remus would make his way out every night to watch the stars, knowing full-well that Sirius would be awake. This was an old routine.

“You know, Remus, my family... They named us after stars. That’s how we were bred, what we must become. Shining and dignified. The thing is, stars? They’re just old light.”

Time passed and Remus continued to set the table for two. Sometimes Sirius would show, and when he didn’t Remus went back to coating the comic pages in ink, leaving it tucked under Sirius’s plate of rapidly cooling beans and toast before going off to work. In these sheets of paper lay his truth – honest, raw, emotion, that appeared almost foreign, even though he had penned the works. He’d never been so open, not even to himself.

One night, he woke to the soft crack of a spine, opening his eyes to a dull yellow light seeping into the darkness of his bedroom. He pushed himself upright and swung his feet to the cold, hard floor.

Sirius’s eyes widened as Remus shuffled into the room, closing the book he had spread open on the kitchen table quickly and quietly. _Notable Magical Names of Our Time_. Wordlessly, Remus filled the kettle and pulled two teacups from the cupboard.

Sirius cracked the silence with a dry chuckle. “Moons,” he said, pushing the book across the table. “They forgot about us.”

It was true. The War was notably absent from history books. Too sad, too soon, too close. Not many people cared to write about it and those who did weren’t exactly Ministry-approved.

A sad smile crossed Remus’s face. “And the Bible didn’t mention us. Not even once,” he jested, placing a cup in front of Sirius.

He didn’t smile.

They drank their tea in wordlessly, their muteness wrapping around them, causing their thoughts to reverberate in their skulls. It wasn’t as if their actions during the war were done in search of glory, but they won. The victor writes history, yet still the Order of the Phoenix was barely a footnote in the most thorough of textbooks. Sirius never thought that war could be made boring, but authors managed to do so. The victory read rather anticlimactically.

“I guess no good deed goes unpunished.”

Sirius placed his empty cup on its saucer with a final clatter, eyes turning to the window in a blank stare. Remus returned to bed.

Sirius began to appear for breakfast more frequently, and Remus continued to leave him the day-old funny pages, covered in his scrawl and neat doodles.

Their conversations, though sparse, became more common. A chuckle here, a grunt there. Sometimes, a memory welled up in Sirius’s mouth, leaking out onto the breakfast table in hurried half-phrases interspersed with languid pauses where his tongue simply lolled about his mouth in a dog-like motion as if he was physically struggling to find the right word.

Years as Padfoot had taken their toll.

Remus’s messy writings and sketches became more direct. He showed Sirius himself in the days immediately after Voldemort’s downfall. He showed him the way that Sirius’s apparent guilt had crept under his skin, souring his gut, spreading and infecting his every molecule – much the same way Remus’s guilt after discovering his innocence was doing now.

One evening, Sirius stumbled into the den to discover Remus situated comfortably in an overstuffed, tartan armchair in front of the fire, comic pages and quill in hand, feet propped on a well-worn trunk. Sirius stilled as recognition trickled from far-off crevices into his immediate consciousness. His school trunk.

Noting the form darkening the doorway, Remus fell to his knees and opened it, shuffling through old photographs and letters, clothing and knick-knacks – relics from a happier time. Sitting back on his haunches, he extracted a pair of worn trousers and a faded Beatles tee, tossing them on the table.

“You could do with a change.”

Reluctantly, Sirius scooped up the clothes and padded to the bathroom. Remus returned his focus to the margins of the comic section.

Twenty minutes, or two quick sketches later, Sirius emerged in a cloud of steam, clean in both body and clothes, freshly shaven for the first time since his arrival.

“I hate to break it to you, Remus, but you’ve got this bloke stuck on the other side of your mirror. He may be quite handsome, but I couldn’t tell. Can hardly see him from behind his hair.”

His voice was raspy, unused, but there was an uncertain smile on his face. He shook his head, spraying water all over the den. Remus should’ve been annoyed. He should’ve huffed and reached for a tea towel, mopping up the puddles while scolding Sirius, but he couldn’t. Sirius was smiling and nothing else mattered.

“You do look quite awful.”

“Are you going to do something about it or just continue to scowl?”

Remus rolled his eyes, padding to the kitchen, relaxing inwardly as he fished the dull scissors out of the supply drawer. This wasn’t normal, it wasn’t easy, but it was a start.

 “And to think, I thought your hair was long when we first met.”

At the first snip, Sirius flinched.

And in the yellow light, Remus pushed his fingers into Sirius’s scalp, pulling the hair taught and straight, working his fingers through the greasy tangles, clipping away matted clumps. He watched gentle curls fall away with each snip. Most landed on the cracked linoleum on their own but some needed to be brushed from shoulders by a gentle backstroke of his fingers. Sirius let his eyes flutter shut, leaning back into the first extended human touch he had experienced in over a decade.

After clipping away the tangles, Remus managed to hack what remained of Sirius’s hair into something that resembled a proper style, though more than a bit ragged, a bit uneven. Long after finishing, Remus continued to thread his hands through his hair, pausing to press the pads of his fingers into the base of his neck, brushing away prickly clippings before continuing to comb.

Sirius let his head fall back to rest against Remus’s chest, eyes closed, and Remus placed his hands on Sirius’s shoulders. They lost track of time as they rested there, Sirius nuzzling back and Remus continuing his light touches, feeling the tension built up during the last decade and a half soften and begin to slide away. He was afraid it he stepped away that it would all come sliding back again, so he remained there, basking in the moment of pleasant quiet, for as long as he could.

Bashfully, Remus led Sirius into the bright white light of the bathroom. Before turning to look into the mirror, he cupped Remus’s face tentatively. Remus blinked hard before speaking, unsure of how to react.

“There’s not much hair left on your head.”

“You’ve done alright,” Sirius stated, a genuine smile breaking the hard lines of his face, softening his eyes.

For a moment, the air was thick, breath quick, and Remus found his hand planted on Sirius’s wrist, pushing it from his face and taking a step towards the man.

“You’re beginning to look a bit like you again.”

They continued to stand there, staring, hearts pounding with such force that Remus was sure if something didn’t happen he would crack a rib

and Sirius’s stomach let out a soft growl.

One slice of cold bread later, they found themselves fully clothed, perched on the edge of Remus’s bed

where they kissed until the morning light.

During the next day’s breakfast, which was more of a brunch, the Prophet lay forgotten on the window sill, neat pages unmarked, as the pair tiptoed through once-awkward conversation with rediscovered familiarity.

And that evening, Sirius returned to Remus’s bed.

In the still of night, long after both feigned sleep, Sirius’s voice rippled through the air, vulnerable.

“Was there ever anyone else?”

 _I’m just old light_.

Images flickered across Remus’s consciousness – men he passed for a moment and later daydreamed about, women his colleagues attempted to set him off with, black haired muggles on motor bikes who he knew but for a single evening.  He rolled over to look at Sirius, still unaccustomed to his cropped hair, taking what features he could make out in the he could in the faint moonlight. He thought of the relationships he could have had, both romantic and not, but had avoided intentionally. He thought of the love he shared with Sirius and of the betrayal that left him bitter, jaded, afraid. He thought of the years he spent utterly alone.

 _You were my sweetest downfall_.

“I loved you first,” he stated simply.

It wasn’t normal, it wasn’t easy, but it was a start.


End file.
